“It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?”

With all due respect to Professor Hulme, his perception of the public understanding of climate science is not reflected in the polling data. In fact, we discussed this in our paper (which is open access and free to download),

“…the perception of the US public is that the scientific community still disagrees over the fundamental cause of GW. From 1997 to 2007, public opinion polls have indicated around 60% of the US public believes there is significant disagreement among scientists about whether GW was happening (Nisbet and Myers 2007). Similarly, 57% of the US public either disagreed or were unaware that scientists agree that the earth is very likely warming due to human activity (Pew 2012).”

Polling data for the UK show a similar level of public misperceptions on climate change. For example, a 2012 Guardian/ICM poll found that only 57% of British voters accept that human-caused climate change is happening. In an April 2013 YouGov poll, 39% of the UK population agreed that “the planet is becoming warmer as a result of human activity,” and 53% agreed “the world’s climate is changing as a result of human activity.” This public misperception on human-caused climate change and the associated scientific consensus was the reason we embarked on our study. For this reason I would also respectfully disagree with Professor Hulme’s description of our paper as “irrelevant,”

“The irrelevance is because none of the most contentious policy responses to climate change are resolved *even if* we accept that 97.1% of climate scientists believe that ‘human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW’…”

Again quoting from our paper,

“An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011). Communicating the scientific consensus also increases people’s acceptance that climate change (CC) is happening (Lewandowsky et al 2012).”

Our co-author John Cook’s PhD research has similarly shown a strong correlation between public awareness of the scientific consensus and support for government climate policy across nearly the entire political spectrum. Our paper is well suited for correcting the public’s misperception that humans are not causing global warming or that there is no scientific consensus on the subject, and hence it is a relevant and useful contribution.

Ben Pile’s Guest Post and Andrew Neil’s Errors

Regarding Ben Pile’s guest post on this blog, I would first like to say that I encourage healthy scientific skepticism, and also a healthy debate about what climate policy should entail. I have no problem with Andrew Neil asking Ed Davey if the recently slowed global surface warming and/or some recent scientific papers should cause the UK government to revise its climate policy. As I detailed in my second Guardian article on the subject, I think the answer is that it clearly shouldn’t, but there is certainly no problem with the question being asked. However, as I noted, healthy skepticism and an informed climate policy discussion must accurately consider all available evidence, which Andrew Neil did not. On that subject, Ben Pile wrote,

“Dana Nuccitelli (who is not a climate scientist) compiled a list of what he thought were Neil’s mistakes.”

To be more precise, I provided evidence to illustrate why most of Neil’s climate comments were erroneous. In his post, Pile did not dispute any of my characterizations of the many errors made by Neil, and I would encourage readers here to click the links to read my articles and the evidence I provided to support my assertions. I think any open-minded reader will agree that Neil made a great many errors on the show and in his subsequent blog post.

“Skeptics” are Not Included in the 97% Consensus

Regarding our consensus paper, Ben Pile repeated claims made by Andrew Montford, Richard Betts, and Roy Spencer (Professor Hulme also made similar statements in the comments) suggesting that even climate “skeptics” would fall within our 97% consensus. As I discussed in my second article referenced by Pile, these claims display a lack of understanding of the nuance in our study.

“The “skeptic” papers [in our study] included those that rejected human-caused global warming and those that minimized the human influence. Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer’s abstracts here. Five of his papers were captured in our literature search; we categorized four as ‘no opinion’ on the cause of global warming, and one as implicitly minimizing the human influence.

Thus, contrary to his testimony, Spencer was not included in the 97 percent consensus. In fact his research was included in the fewer than 3 percent of papers that either rejected or minimized the human contribution to global warming.

Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950. The consensus on human-caused global warming is robust.”

To summarize, our study did not merely show that 97% of peer-reviewed studies taking a position on the issue agree that humans are causing global warming, although that conclusion was our main focus because of the public misperception on the subject. The 97% also excluded papers that minimized the human influence on global warming (either implicitly or explicitly stating that humans are responsible for less than 50% of the observed warming since 1950). And we also collected data on papers explicitly quantifying the human influence, among which 96% agreed that humans are the primary driver of global warming since 1950.

Job Well Done by Ed Davey

Our study should certainly not be used to suggest all climate science and policy questions are settled. Ben Pile seemed to suggest Ed Davey did so on the BBC program,

“Yet the survey was cited by Davey himself in defence of the government’s climate policies in the face of changing science.”

I would encourage readers here to go back and watch the interview. The entire discussion of the 97% consensus was limited to the first two minutes of the program. It merely involved Davey pointing out that human-caused global warming has been established in the peer-reviewed literature, and now it’s time to move on and discuss the appropriate policy to address the issue (followed by Andrew Neil making false statements about our paper). Throughout the interview Ed Davey pointed out that it’s important to retain healthy skepticism of the science, but that it’s also important to consider all the available evidence (which Andrew Neil refused to do throughout the show). In fact, Ed Davey displayed a strong understanding of the basic science. I think British citizens should be happy to have such a well informed Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Pile’s Inaccurate Claims About Our Paper

Finally, Ben Pile made a number of factually inaccurate claims about our paper and its authors,

“Accordingly, rather than being a dispassionate study into scientific opinion, the 97% survey was a superficially academic exercise, intended to obfuscate the substance of the climate debate. Those who fell for it forget that its authors, aside from having their own — shock horror! — agendas, have no expertise in climate science, much less any interest in taking the sceptics’ arguments on.”

As noted above, the purpose of our study was to try and correct the widespread public misperception about human-caused global warming and the scientific consensus on the subject. That was our “agenda” – as it always is – to communicate what the peer-reviewed literature says to the public. Frankly Ben Pile’s comments about our “agendas” are offensive, as are his claims that we have no climate science expertise.

Contrarianism is Not Skepticism

To summarize, contrary to the widespread public misperception on the subject, there is a consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing climate change. There is also a consensus that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. Correcting that misperception is critical in achieving public support for climate policy, and has been the goal of our discussions about our study. I hope we would all agree that a misinformed public is not in our best interest – we cannot solve a problem without first understanding it.

There are of course remaining climate uncertainties and nuances that are not addressed in our consensus paper, and it’s certainly valid to ask if they should impact our climate policy. However, the argument among “skeptics” seems to be that given remaining uncertainties, we should take a “wait and see” approach to climate change for the time being. That argument is fundamentally flawed. Uncertainty is not our friend in climate science – it simply means the problem could either be larger or smaller than we currently expect. Meanwhile our current climate policy is woefully inadequate in addressing the problem, so even in a best-case scenario we’re not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately the most important thing to bear in mind is that true skepticism requires considering all available evidence. Ben Pile claimed,

“Andrew Neil, in just one show, has done more to promote an active understanding of climate science and its controversies than has been done by the Carbon Brief blog…”

I could not disagree more, precisely because (aside from the many scientific errors he made) Neil refused to consider all the evidence (unlike Pile’s example of the Carbon Brief blog, which is an excellent resource that does consider all the scientific evidence). That approach of only considering selective pieces evidence and ignoring the inconvenient data simply cannot promote an active understanding of climate science. That is not skepticism; it’s contrarianism.

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Spencers own opinion does not count then? Nor Lindzen nor anybodies else. Just how their papers are rated by you?

Ie it is not all about your paper or counting papers. Except for you trying to insist tbat sceptics are outside of the consensus.

That the Earth has warmed since 1800’s , co2 is a greenhouse gas and man has contributed to climate change, is something that Spencer, Lindzen, Watts, Montford, etc &would all agree with and is totally consistant within the range of the IPCC literature.

Lets us not forget Cook’s approach to this paper AGW with no specific quantification. That basically includes virtually everbodies opinion about the science. Ie that agw has some effect. And Lindzens 1.2C of warming per co2 doubling right in the consensus.

So why do you insist on framing the debate in such away to exclude people, reduced to counting papers (the sceptic. Or contrarians now that you do not eush them the perfectly acceptable label of sceptic). MYLES Allen (the climate scientist) for example says he would agree with Lindzen about most things, but rather agree on what we agree Dana (presumably Cook et al) seem to wish to use and promote their paper to push sceptic outside of any debate

In particular, note how confused the categories are. The following statement is formed by joining two examples of the categories, as given in the Cook et al paper.

‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’ BUT ‘The human contribution to the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission’

This statement conforms to categories 2 and 7 in the Cook paper, and does not contradict itself. Yet categories 2 and 7 are seemingly mutually-exclusive.

However, Spence’s observation that Lindzen’s papers fall into both categories is far more fatal for Dana’s defence of the 97% survey.

So Spencer’s opinion turned out to be wrong. And his pubic voicing of this error, without checking the data, rather undermines anything he has to say on this issue.

I think you need to read Dana below:

Our study isn’t about opinions, it’s about what peer-reviewed research says. If Lindzen has published papers that both endorse and minimize AGW, then he’ll be put in both categories.

Spencer says he is in the 97%. The selection process for papers used a specific database – Web of Science -and used only these specific topic keywords ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’ to search. It is a subset of the whole body of work. It really is not the word of God on everyone’s opinion. 😉

” …in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing [some] global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements.”

I’m sceptical of CO2’s ability to raise the global temperature significantly. I accept CO2 is a GHG, temperatures have risen since the Little Ice Age and man has contributed to climate change through deforestation, concreting over vast tracts of land etc.

“On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°.”

Svante Arrhenius, 1896.

Of course, much of the experimental work had already been done by John Tyndall, and Joseph Fourrier who discovered the greenhouse effect in 1824.

It’s OK to be wrong, everyone is sometimes, you only have a problem when you can’t accept that you’re wrong even when the evidence is in front of you. Hence ‘denier’.

To my mind the attitude of Mr Nuccitelli to Spencer is the most remarkable thing about this rebuttal.

Five of his papers were captured in our literature search;

The “capture” of his papers and subsequent categorisation by the raters from the Skeptical Science blog should give pause for thought for anyone holding this paper up as scientifically unbiased

Thus, contrary to his testimony, Spencer was not included in the 97 percent consensus.

This is a vaguely worded statement that, if it pertains to any fact, can only mean that Spencer was not included in the 97% defined and created by the paper’s method and process.

I would think that even with the best will in the world that no one can say a study of this kind can be declared to have both its method and process held as being infallible and set in stone as beyond reproach. But when Nuccitelli makes his statements about Spencer’s claim citing his own paper as reason for gainsaying it he seems to think this is the case and Spencer has no further say in his own beliefs!

What is Dan Nuccitelli trying to say here? If Roy Spencer is not in the self rating group then there can be no further statement made about Spencer’s *actual* personal belief. Spencer made a statement of his belief that would need addressing*separately* from the evidence of this paper.

If Nuccitelli thinks Spencer is lying about his beliefs then he should say it explicitly and make further arguments.

To me it is utterly beyond comprehension that it is explicitly being echoed again here as part of a rebuttal.

There are also records of Cook et al discussing what rating to give the papers and the SkS team rating the papers were given the opportunity to correct their ratings to match other members of the team – that is hardly independent rating is it?

“To summarize, contrary to the widespread public misperception on the subject, there is a consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing climate change. There is also a consensus that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.”

Its always necessary to watch the pea under the thimble. The first of these two statements by Nucitelli is not quite what their survey showed since their actual conclusion was about “global warming” and is repeated in the graphic at the head of this article. This is not of course synonymous with “climate change”. It is also an unquantified position with the implicit “some” before the words “climate change” in the article (Global warming in the survey).

However Nucitelli’s second statement cannot be derived from their survey since they never asked the question about “primary cause”. This is of course what they want people to believe but is definitely not shown by their study

There is no consensus on policy action, nor does this survey of papers have anything to say about what policies, nor any agreement about policies. So, here we are, it is all about policy. Sceptics can agree with the consensus position of AGW science, but still be contrarians to be excluded/ignored because of disagreeing with policies.

In fact, Dana has demonstrated this already, calling Richard Tol a ‘denier’ describing that people can be ‘deniers’ whilst accepting AGW science, and as Prof Richard Betts (Met Office, Head of Climate Impacts & IPCC AR4 & AR5 lead author) observed its ‘politics’ .

So here we are, Dana an employee of Tetra Tech and sometime blogger at the Guardian and Skeptical Science, is just fighting his political/policy battles against anybody who associates, or even just retweets, people he doesn’t like, or disagree with, or individuals that Skeptical Science have a bitter blog climate war with (ie Morano, Watts and Poptech, etc,etc) and as a guest author at WUWT that presumably includes me.

I would agree with Richard Betts about the majority of climate science, and not a single UK climate scientist I know, would say that I’m anti-science, reject science and absolutely not call me a denier. Yet like with Peter Gleick, who I might be associated with or talk to, as Peter made clear in an email to Dr Tamsin Edwards (thet famously disagreed about communications style, one day later he phished Heartland Institute) :http://unsettledclimate.org/2012/02/02/clarifications-and-how-better-to-communicate-science/

In fact even Paul Erhlich and Peter Gleick when I explained my position with respect to AGW, (lower end of IPCC sensitivity range) also agreed that I was not a ‘climate denier’ (check twitter!)

but for Dana and some others, anybody I (or anybody else) retweet, or blogs that I may comment on, or people that I talk to, might make me a denier to be watched or tracked (ref Mike Marriot Watching the deniers – statement – who researched (and John Cook) me without consent for Lewandowsky, Cook, Marriott et al – Recursive Fury – Frontier – in limbo due to ethics complaints)

So perhaps Dana and Skeptical Science (or Professor Lewandowsky and Cook) should keep an eye on Prof Richard Betts twitter timeline to see who he is associating with or retweeting, just in case he is showing denier behavioural tendencies.

Dana:
“Our paper is well suited for correcting the public’s misperception that humans are not causing global warming or that there is no scientific consensus on the subject, and hence it is a relevant and useful contribution.”

the public is suposed to think *ALL* global warming?

Again this is the false framing of black and white believer or non believers. (as Hulme alluded to) the public do not divide like that.

How might and do the public answer these questions:
Does climate change (naturally or otheriwse, or both)

Do you think the earth has warmed n the last 2 centuries (could show them HADCRUT4 graph)

Has man contributed to climate change,
do you think climate change is a mixture of natural and and made contribution.
What Proportions

Lindzen has papers which both “implicitly endorses AGW” and “implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW”. Curiously, one of the papers that implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW acknowledges that CO2 is a GHG and has a forcing effect on the global mean temperature. Weird kind of rejection of AGW. But anyway, Lindzen has papers that are in both the 97% and the 3%.

What this shows is that trying to divine a scientists’ opinion from reading paper abstracts is fraught with problems. A good scientist will publish their research results, even if they are in conflict with their prevailing viewpoint or unexpected. Secondly, a scientist may well change their minds – possibly even publishing papers later which overturn their own earlier results.

Therefore declaring Spencer is in the 3% just because you found one paper out of 5 in the 3% is hardly clear evidence on his personal views on climate. He may – just like Lindzen – have other papers in the 97%, and your assessments may be biased.

Finally, I find the use of the term “minimizing” to be vague and unscientific. Minimisation is a mathematical operation with a scientific meaning, but the way it is used here is not consistent with the mathematical definition, so I can only assume the authors are using it in a different, subjective way. Since a paper that explicitly states that CO2 is a greenhouse gas with a forcing effect on the surface is “minimizing/rejecting AGW” I doubt that it has been applied objectively.

What this shows is that trying to divine a scientists’ opinion from reading paper abstracts is fraught with problems.

Good thing that’s not what we did in our study then, isn’t it? Our study isn’t about opinions, it’s about what peer-reviewed research says. If Lindzen has published papers that both endorse and minimize AGW, then he’ll be put in both categories.

and if Lindzen. Spencer and Montford or Watts state their position on climate change, ie earth has warmed, co2 is a greenhouse gas, and man contributes to GW. Then that is to be ignored, they are officially outside of the scientific ‘consensus’ – which is what this paper is all about.. framing the issue to exclude people based on ratings of abstract, to exclude people, because the papers methods say so. Whatever anybody actually says…. about the science

Your study is about opinions. Your ratings of papers are your subjective opinions of the papers. And table 5 in your paper proves that your opinions coincided with the authors’ self-ratings not often enough to be called science.

Good thing that’s not what we did in our study then, isn’t it? Our study isn’t about opinions, it’s about what peer-reviewed research says.

Watch the pea here. I didn’t say that was what you did in your study, Dana. I’m talking about this blog post, and Spencer’s testimony, and in that context you are most certainly discussing people’s opinions.

Spencer’s testimony was almost certainly noting that *his views* were part of the 97%. That he agreed humans cause [some] global warming. He wasn’t talking about the one paper you rated, he was talking about his personal views on climate science.

And you know that’s what Spencer was talking about, as you breathlessly switch from talking about one of his research papers and his opinions. When you write:

Spencer was not included in the 97 percent consensus

You don’t say “Spencer’s papers” or “Spencer’s research”. You say *Spencer* was not included. You knew full well Spencer was talking about his opinions and you twisted it. You switch between his opinion and the one paper of his that you rated to be in the 3%, not in your study, but in this blog post.

And as I have shown with Lindzen, having a paper in the 3% does not preclude a researcher from being a part of the 97%.

Your commentary here is careless how it handles these matters, and indicative of the sloppy nature of this piece of research.

We know that the paper followed John Cook’s word Ari’s p0rno approach – ‘no specific quantification’ of AGW for the definition of the consensus. but look how it is being played out in the media.

A comment borrowed from WUWT

“When you look at Cook’s introduction, rather than the abstract, he actually says

“We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).”

And co-author, Mark Richardson, is quoted as saying

“We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made.”

Mark Richardson is Phd student, at Reading University Meteorology Department, according to the affiliations listed on the Cook et al paper, yet, he is too shy to declare his affiliation to Skeptical Science on the paper. He is a regular Guest Author at Skeptical Science (MarkR). Mark has 21 articles there, vs my 12 at WUWT, so just more minor deceptions, economical with facts, etc, they presumably don’t want to show all the authors are closely associated with Skeptical Science, and just cite Uni affiliations to give it more credibility?

A minor slap on the academic misconduct wrist for Mark and a couple of others one professor and a phd and a Msc students?

That’s right. The “independent” raters talked to each other about how to rate the papers. This must be some new form of independence I’ve never heard of. I’m not the only one thrown off by this. Sarah Green, one of the most active raters, observed the non-independence:

But, this is clearly not an independent poll, nor really a statistical exercise. We are just assisting in the effort to apply defined criteria to the abstracts with the goal of classifying them as objectively as possible.
Disagreements arise because neither the criteria nor the abstracts can be 100% precise. We have already gone down the path of trying to reach a consensus through the discussions of particular cases. From the start we would never be able to claim that ratings were done by independent, unbiased, or random people anyhow.

That depends how you define “just a comment”. Its purpose was to correct some of the errors in DK12, but the paper also had some useful analysis on global heat accumulation that probably could have been published without being a comment on DK12.

Then why are you ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly addressed this point, including in this post?

Dana Nuccitelli”Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950.

Isn’t it inconsistent/dishonest to use the author’s self-ratings data to make a dubious point, but you refuse to accept Roy Spencer’s self-ratings for his own papers? Don’t the author’s know more about their own papers than you and the other authors of Cook et al? You are the anonymous “citizen science” raters, aren’t you? Doesn’t table 5 in your paper clearly prove that your rating abilities are poor?

For any passing observer, if anybody wonder why Cook et al 97% paper is getting a lot of attention, perhaps because the authors sort a lot of media attention. Dana explained to prof Dan Kahan his measure of success:

The metric of success is not media coverage. If it were, every one of the previous half-dozen studies published in the last 10 yrs — all of which reached concludions identical to yours — could be deemed “successful” even though none of them has succeeded in increasing the % of the public in the US that says it “believes” in AGW.

The test is in the impact on public opinion. You can say those studies were hemmed in by concentrated efforts to discredit them; same for yours, of course. If you can thik of a way to solve that problem we can just “publicize” the previous studies.

Frankly, I believe your study & the way you have presented it in press releases & on the web are the sorts of things very likely to polarize people. They exude very clear partisan meanings.

Have you tried an experiment where you show your paper, or your web site, or your press release to a nationally representative sample of members of the U.S. public?

If so, show us the results.

If not — why did you decide to do a study like this & recommend publicizing your results as a communication strategy given how plausible the prediction of it backfiring would be & given much is at stake here? Science communication should be evidence based — just like everything else.”
Prof Dan Kahan – Yale
————————–

This post by Dana clearly displays the problem at the heart of “climate science”. Namely, that it isn’t really a science at all but a “pick’n mix” collation of scraps of genuine science – mixed with politics, activism and self-interest.

Dana gives the game away by his dishonest attempts to side-step Ben Pile’s observation that neither he nor Cook have any scientific qualifications relevant to the science they promote.

He claims Cook has authored a climate “text book” – but it isn’t really a text book. It’s just another political diatribe written with a collaborator at his activist “Skeptical Science” website who happens to have once held a university teaching post. Cook’s promotional material for the “textbook” includes the statement – “Students learning climate science will need to put into proper context the myths and attacks on science conducted by those who deny the scientific consensus…”.

Dana defends his own credentials by referring to a purported climate science paper “Nuccitelli et al 2012” – without disclosing the fact that 4 of its 5 authors (like the authors of this work) are activist collaborators at “Skeptical Science” and he himself uses the misleading affiliation of his employers Tetra Tech – where he helps with environmental clean up work which has nothing at all to do with climate science.

The quality of the work Dana is attempting to defend has to be judged in the light of the leaked forum posts (referred to previously by Barry Woods and Geoff Chambers) showing the nature of the planning and preparatory discussion of it by his fellow activists.

If Dana, Cook, or any of their activist group, had a single scientific bone in their body – they would understand that designing a “scientific study” to achieve a desired public relations outcome has absolutely nothing at at all to do with science.

They are simply activists masquerading as scientists – and the sole value of their “work” will be as raw material for a future generation of proper scientists who will try and figure out what went wrong with “climate science”.

Now whatever the paper did, it made zero reference to impact, any consensus on impacts and there is no justification at all BASED ON THIS PAPER for a 97% consensus of ‘dangerous’ to be declared a finding of it, did the authors seek to correct this in anyway, no they celebrated it by listing it on their blog, with a link to President Barack Obama.

———–
Maybe John Cook was not aware of President Barack Obama misrepresenting and overstating this paper, when he said (or his official account did) 97% of scientists agree climate change is real man made and dangerous?

Sadly NOT. John Cook was loving all the attention and made ZERO effort to correct this Barack Obama tweet (to 30 million people, plus widely reported else where in the media

“Australian researcher John Cook, an expert in climate change communication, was inundated with requests for interviews by US media outlets after Obama took to Twitter to endorse his project’s final report.

“It was pretty cool news,” said Mr Cook, a fellow at the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and founder of the website skepticalscience.com. “It was out of our expectations.”

A survey of scientific papers by a team led by Mr Cook and published by Fairfax Media this week found more than 97 per cent of researchers endorsed the view that humans are to blame for global warming. The peer-reviewed outcome flies in the face of public perception in countries such as the US or Australia that scientists are divided on the issue.

“One of the highest predictors of how important people think climate change is, is cues from political leaders,” Mr Cook said. “So if the leaders don’t seem to care, people don’t care either.

“A cue from Obama is a big step,” he said. “The fact it goes to more than 31 million followers, it just raises the awareness of consensus.”

I’m trying to think of a polite sentence to describe and express my feelings about the media manipulation I perceive the authors have undertaken, it has the word ‘contempt’ in, but I cannot tone it down enough for civilities sake..

Why do I say that?

well President Obama is now going after Deniers in Congress…. (highly political, v dangerous for the public perception of scientists)

www. BarackObama.com

“Call out a climate denier

Check out our list of known climate deniers in Congress-elected officials who refuse to even acknowledge the science behind climate change—and call them out on Twitter.”http://www.barackobama.com/climate-deniers

So Dana, will you or any of your co-authors, tell the President, that your paper says nothing about ‘dangerous’?

“Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950. The consensus on human-caused global warming is robust.”

You have stated that authors’ responses included 228 self-ratings in category 1.-humans are the primary cause. In your table 5 there are 39 authors’ self-ratings that reject AGW. Obviously they reject the assertion that humans are the primary cause of AGW. Follow me so far, Dana? If you want to play this game you should at least consistently use the appropriate numbers. It’s 228 versus 39.

Look at the graphic at the top right of this blog post. ’97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are changing global temperature’. Supported by the paper? You be the judge, here are a few papers:
———————————————

Purpose – Aims to focus on aspects of the menace of spam, or unsolicited messages by e-mail, are treated, especially a service designed to stop spam at or near its source. A TV documentary asserting that global warming is not due to human activity is reviewed and shown to be unsound. A search facility that contributes to charity is introduced, as well as sources of health advice in periodic newsletters.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews developments on the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.

Findings – Combating spam by the means described can be effective. The view that global warming is due to human activity is not seriously challenged, though there is room for difference of opinion about the imminence of catastrophe.

Practical implications – The menace of spam can be mitigated by the means described. There can be little doubt that global warming is largely due to human activity.

Originality/value – It is hoped this is a valuable periodic review.

———————————————

Banagrass Vs Eucalyptus Wood As Feedstocks For Metallurgical Biocarbon Production

Excessive emissions of fossil CO2 are known to be a primary cause of global climate change. Emissions from the iron and steel-making industries account for 5−6% of global fossil CO2 emissions. Biocarbon (i.e., charcoal) could be used to replace the coal currently employed to smelt iron ore and thereby reduce fossil CO2 emissions. In Brazil, Eucalyptus wood charcoal is used to smelt iron ore, but there is interest in the use of charcoal produced from other biomass feedstocks. Banagrass, a variety of elephantgrass (Pennisetum purpureum, Schum.), which produces near-record amounts of biomass, is a promising biomass candidate for charcoal production in Brazil and elsewhere. In this paper we describe results of charcoal production from banagrass of different ages and states of demineralization. Mature banagrass provides the highest yields of biocarbon. In addition to its maturity, the structure of the feedstock strongly influences the fixed-carbon yield. Our results indicate that banagrass may be preferred to Eucalyptus wood as a promising feedstock for metallurgical biocarbon production.

———————————-

Experimental Investigation Of A Comfort Heating System For A Passenger Vehicle With An Air-cooled Engine

This study describes a novel approach utilizing waste heat from the exhaust gas for comfort heating of the passenger compartment of a vehicle with an air-cooled engine. In the devised system, a water stream heated by the hot exhaust gas was sent to the passenger compartment of a commercial minibus with an air-cooled engine, and the system was tested under various operating conditions. Variations of the temperatures at several locations inside the vehicle were monitored while ambient temperatures were −3, 0, 5 and 10 °C and there were various numbers of passengers on board. It is found that the system
shows a reasonable heating performance while consuming no extra fuel for this purpose, and experimental data is in good agreement with numerical results based on heat loss calculations. Results show that when the ambient temperature is above 0 °C and the engine speed is above 2500 rpm, the system yielded comfortable compartment temperatures. Compared with alternative methods u
sing extra fuel for comfort heating, the proposed system decrease
s vehicle operating costs and environmental pollution caused by the heating system as well as causing a lower global warming.

———————————————

Why should anyone look any deeper into this ridiculous charade? A paper that deals with the ‘menace of spam’ is counted as part of the consensus of climate experts? An experimental investigation of a comfort heating system? Absurd! Mike Hulme said ‘The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it.’ and there is nothing in Dana’s rebuttal that addresses the substance of Hulme’s observation in my view.

““An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011).”

Public belief in the evidence of climate change is increasing at the moment but has hovered in the 60-70% range for quite some time. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., in the Climate Fix, makes a compelling argument that public opinion and support are certainly high enough to impact policy but that the intensity of interest in the subject is low. The public seems to see AGW as a big problem but not our biggest. He goes on to explain that public opinion and political action don’t always go hand in hand. To wit the “bailout” had very little public support.

Dr. Pielke provides evidence that badgering the public runs the risk of decreasing trust in the science and support for political change. I reckon that’s “the boy who cried wolf” syndrome. The activists shout that the world is boiling, the seas are rising, the polar bears are dying and the glaciers will be gone by tomorrow (or 2035). However, the changes are certainly more subtle by orders of magnitude than the activism and public loses interest.

As for Ben Pile’s claim that your team lacked expertise, that was a bit overblown. No doubt Dr. Green and the 4 post grads deserve more credit than was given. In response you write, “Not that our expertise should matter – Ben Pile’s comment on the subject is ad hominem.” This is equally problematic.

Claiming expertise in one arena where one’s expertise lies in another is yet another fallacy. It seems to me that to the extent that an environmental consultant, a former police officer, and an oil man turned climate activist contributed to the writing, the consensus paper is argumentum ad verecundium.

“As for Ben Pile’s claim that your team lacked expertise, that was a bit overblown.”

I agree — it’s not the sort of point I would typically make. But the point of the Cook et al paper was to represent expertise in debates about climate — to delimit permissible topics of the debate. So it seemed reasonable in such a discussion to call the authors out. You can’t claim expertise does matter (the consensus) and that expertise shouldn’t matter (the authors) simultaneously. There were complaints that the Davey-Neil interview ought to have been between experts. An expert, it turns out, though, means one of the 97%, not one of the 3%. When it turned out that the expert might be Spencer, the definition of the 97% changed. When it turned out that it might be Lindzen, the room fell silent.

Are the authors experts? It seems hard to believe that they are, and it reflects worse on them if they think debates in climate science can be put into these categories and still mean something.

The part that is forgotten above is that expertise was pitched against ‘agendas’ – or ‘motivated reasoning’ in the SkS vernacular. It seems OK for SkS to speculate about people’s motivations, and to exclude them from the debate on that basis.

Ben, it’s difficult to perceive from any reading of the Cook et al “consensus paper” that its “point” is to “to delimit permissible topics of the debate”. That’s an astonishing and overblown mischaracterisation. The paper reiterates the nature of the scientific consensus with respect to scientific literature on anthropogenic role in global warming and gives some insight into the perception of informed individuals about scientific papers based on their abstracts in comparison to what the papers authors, themselves, consider to be the status of their papers in the context of assessment criteria.

One needs to disentangle oneself from the mess one can get into by being overfocused on expertise (real or apparent)! In many scientific issues one can easily have the relevant expertise without being “an expert”. Individuals with scientific training in physics and physical chemistry can easily understand the basic elements of much of the work in climate science. The proof is in the pudding. If you were to spend bit of time on a science blog (e.g. skepticalscience.com since the consensus paper originated in that context) you can see that there is a rather extraordinary level of scientific expertise amongst individuals with scientific backgrounds and even those simply willing to make the effort to learn relevant science.

One of the underlying elements of science is that one can make rather objective interpretations about things scientific. Government policy is no doubt based on a sound science; I expect Ed Davey could expound on this further (a well-informed interviewer would help!). However it’s also useful to know that the objective elements that underlie policy-making have a very broad base of scientific support within the relevant scientific community as assessments of scientific papers/abstracts and expert opinion demonstrates. That all seems to be very useful information to help the interested public…

chris
it’s difficult to perceive from any reading of the Cook et al “consensus paper” that its “point” is to “to delimit permissible topics of the debate”. That’s an astonishing and overblown mischaracterisation.

I don’t think so at all. Indeed, there can be few other interpretations of the study, which is after all, from the SkS fold, where the intention is precisely as I’ve described. The title of Dana’s reply to my post here is ‘An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy’. His, and the SkS complaint in general is that sceptics are given any airtime at all. Only authorised, qualified people may speak, and the survey results determine who may and may not speak.

chris If you were to spend bit of time on a science blog (e.g. skepticalscience.com since the consensus paper originated in that context) you can see that there is a rather extraordinary level of scientific expertise amongst individuals with scientific backgrounds and even those simply willing to make the effort to learn relevant science.

It is precisely because I *have* spent time at SkS that I am able to form the belief that the perspective of the ‘science’ seemingly produced there is questionable. For example, my analysis of Stephan Lewandowsky’s work — see my essay at http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/13716/#.UfeCho1wrng for example — is that anti-sceptics such as Lewandowsky and Cook have attempted to understand scepticism as an object.

However, the categories of research produced out of that fold is invariably shonky — be it the Moon Hoax, Recursive Fury, or this 97% paper. It turns out that they are all attempts to reify their own prejudices, rather than test their hypotheses.

It could of course, as I suggest in the previous post, be naivety or ignorance that drives the research. In which case, I think the point stands — it’s just a less self-aware attempt to frame the political debate with pseudo science.

Not really Ben. Again you’re ignoring the nature of objectivity in relation to science and scientific evidence. There are entirely objective conclusions to make about the nature of evidence-based consensus on scientific issues. Anyone broadly familiar with the published science would recognise that (whatever one may feel about its origins!) the consensus paper broadly represents the nature of the scientific consensus. That’s useful information to know and disseminate. Ed Davey is well briefed on the science and it’s not so surprising that he is informed on the nature of the consensus that underpins government policy.

There is an awful defensiveness about your comments (e.g. “Only authorised, qualified people may speak, and the survey results determine who may and may not speak.”) Where does that interpretation come from? If I were to make a comment on what I understand to be the SkS “philosophy” it might be that one should be able to recognise what is and isn’t bad science. There is huge misrepresentation of the science of global warming – why not highlight this and counter it with scientifically-justifiable explanations? We know very well the appalling consequences of misrepresentation of science on ciggie smoking, AIDS, MMR vaccines and so on…any effort to make faithful representation of scientific evidence and especially well-established evidence that underpins a consensus is more than worthwhile.

Again you’re ignoring the nature of objectivity in relation to science and scientific evidence.

I don’t see Ben Pile ignoring the “nature of objectivity” could you quote some of his words and explain alongside them how he does this?

I do see that he is making a critique that the Cook paper saying it is not intrinsically an objective exercise. Just because the Cook paper may declare itself “scientific” doesn’t prevent the observation that it is not objective. There is no mutual exclusion, your use of the words “scientific” and “objective” like this seems empty.

BTW. Your statement “There is an awful defensiveness about your comments” doesn’t display much of the “nature of objectivity” especially since it is not connected to any further explanation of what negative quality “defensiveness” brings to his critique even if it were true. Rhetorically empty 😉

“If I were to make a comment on what I understand to be the SkS “philosophy” it might be that one should be able to recognise what is and isn’t bad science.”

I think you’ve misunderstood at least Dana’s argument. For instance, he says “An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy”.

That argument is not about trusting an able public, but instead puts an emphasis on the broadcasters’ responsibility to a feckless public — a deficit model, in other words.

Moreover, the determinant of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science is, on this view, not the substance of the argument, but the author’s (or paper’s) membership of either the 97% or the 3% categories.

“We know very well the appalling consequences of misrepresentation of science on ciggie smoking, AIDS, MMR vaccines and so on…”

That claim needs a lot of careful unpacking. I think we should be concerned with this idea that people smoked because they were told it was safe, or that they had unprotected sex because they were told AIDS is a myth, and that they refused MMR because they were told there was a link to autism. After all, *nobody* believes that smoking is safe, yet they still do it. I think we might want to look at why trust in institutions of medicine collapses, and that’s tied up with many things. For instance, people are suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry that produces vaccines, for all sorts of good and bad reasons, that ultimately lead to decisions about getting their kids vaccinated. That’s not at all to let Wakefield and various newspapers off the hook; but it does say the issue is more complex than somebody saying something wrong and people simply believing it.

I think we should also be concerned about the way in which climate change has been over-stated. But that wasn’t part of the study. Why not? If the consensus is important, then so is departure from it in either direction — warmist or coolist. And as I point out above, we can see how Dana gives license to speculation through the precautionary principle: “uncertainty is not your friend”. I point out that this has political utility. Essentially, environmentalism is a politics of fear. What really concerns me is the resistance to analyses of claims about the climate through social and historical perspectives. There’s a lot of politics and ‘ideology’ hiding behind your claim to objectivity. Science is something of a fig leaf.

But it is pretty objective (as far as it’s possible to be in surveys of this sort where individuals personal assessments are required!). The more important question is whether it provides a faithful representation of the scientific literature in relation to scientific evidence on anthropogenic contribution to the very marked global warming of especially the last 40 years. I’m pretty informed on the relevant science and it seems to me to portray the truism that the scientific evidence overwhelming supports the interpretation of a dominant anthropogenic contribution to global warming. Ed Davey, who we presume is well-briefed seems to concur. Personally I find it very encouraging that a government minister is properly briefed on matters scientific and is (as far as we can tell) pursuing policy based on this.

Ben, you didn’t “…describe the problems with the study in more depth…” on your web site. You made a blog post that consists of reproducing paragraphs from various sources accompanied by comments. That doesn’t constitute a description of problems – however well-meaning it isn’t science. One of the things we surely need to be very careful of in considering scientific evidence in relation to policy (aka Ed Davey) is that we properly address scientifically-justified evidence that informs a consensus. Blog posts aren’t science. Occasionally (SkS and some of its members seem to do this quite well) well-informed bloggers write scientific papers that contribute to informing the consensus.

This is a crucial point isn’t it? As far as I’m aware there is one individual (Dr. Richard Tol) who is attempting to formulate a publishable critique of the consensus paper. That’s fine. If and when he publishes this we’ll see whether a very careful (one would hope!) critique has any merit.

On smoking, and AIDS and MMR it sounds a little like you don’t consider that misinformation campaigns (however possibly well meant, which might apply to some of the ill-informed MMR writing). And yet we know that since the ciggie industry were forced to admit the problems with smoking with respect to lung cancer and respiratory disease, and regulation forced the industry to ramp back advertising and to properly represent the nature of ciggie-related disease, that ciggie smoking has markedly decreased in the UK. More generally misinformation on scientific issues should be countered as much as possible…we’re lucky, in fact, that so many scientifically-informed individuals are making the effort to do so…

I’m pretty informed on the relevant science and it seems to me to portray the truism that the scientific evidence overwhelming supports the interpretation of a dominant anthropogenic contribution to global warming.

For the purposes of objectivity I think I need to remind you 😉

a) The paper’s goal wasn’t a meta study on the quality of scientific evidence supporting a theory in atmospheric physics; it is social science study judging positions shown in abstracts from a single scientific database. That is why it includes haemotology, spam filter and farm food drying papers.

b) The paper doesn’t show that all the papers in the 97% supported “dominant anthropogenic contribution to global warming”

Chris – “But it is pretty objective (as far as it’s possible to be in surveys of this sort where individuals personal assessments are required!).”

It isn’t just the assessments which are subjective. The categories are subjective, and incoherent and inconsistent as I explain at my blog post, which you dismiss rather too quickly, if I may say so.

“You made a blog post that consists of reproducing paragraphs from various sources accompanied by comments. That doesn’t constitute a description of problems – however well-meaning it isn’t science.”

I’m at a loss to understand your point. I don’t claim that the analysis I offer there is ‘science’. However, there is some logic, which demonstrates problems with the categories, namely their non-exclusivity and their subsequent revision as two categories reflecting assent to/dissent from the putative consensus claim of 50% of warming in the late C20th. Manifestly, the categories do not capture such assent/dissent, and moreover are meaningless in the wider debates about climate change. For example, none of the scientific developments raised by Neil in his interview with Davey contradict the putative consensus position in Cook et al.

“Blog posts aren’t science.”

Congratulations. They are, however, platforms for debates. If a scientific paper argues 2+2=5, the fact that I point out its error only a blog does not render the criticism invalid, or ‘unscientific’.

“On smoking, and AIDS and MMR it sounds a little like you don’t consider that misinformation campaigns (however possibly well meant, which might apply to some of the ill-informed MMR writing).”

I don’t discount the possibility at all. Though I would be reluctant to say that there exists any purposive, ‘let’s deliberately mislead the public’ campaign. What I was suggesting was that you seemed preoccupied with a deficit model, whereas –especially in the case of HIV/AIDS and MMR — there are complex issues involving issues of trust, rather than simply information. Here’s a good example…

“And yet we know that since the ciggie industry were forced to admit….”

The tobacco industry was forced to be defensive because of potential injury claims, not simply because its marketing was threatened by public health advice. Furthermore, the rights and wrongs of their strategy apart, I think it is healthier to allow people to make their own decisions about their health than it is to make it the responsibility of regulatory agencies. You may, of course, argue that the greater good is done by banning adverts and the such like, and you could speculate that this has contributed to the welcome reduction in smoking. But the cost of such interventions is autonomy.

Returning to the deficit model; the problem this creates in the political sphere is now an expectation that the role of government is to mitigate societal and individual risks, and that this becomes the zero-level in the management of public (and increasingly, private) life. Essentially, this *creates* the deficit model as a reality. And that’s why I find the climate debate so fascinating. It is where the clearest perspective on the politics of risk can be achieved: it shows how risk is used to demand the suspension of normal, democratic politics, and to deprive the public of its agency as a whole and as individuals, for the promise of mere survival.

Aside from the main post, Dana does not appear to have engaged in substantial discussion in the comments. He appears to be dismissing the discussion in this way:

Did anyone commenting here actually read the above post?

The remaining balance of his comments:
——–|

Good thing that’s not what we did in our study then, isn’t it? Our study isn’t about opinions, it’s about what peer-reviewed research says. If Lindzen has published papers that both endorse and minimize AGW, then he’ll be put in both categories.

—

That’s because it wasn’t.

–and–

then why are you ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly addressed this point, including in this post?

Dana Nuccitelli”Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950.

——–|
In closing, it appears that Dana asked for this blog post in order to dismiss the issues by saying ‘the contrarians haven’t read a word I’ve written’ rather than to engage. Disappointing but not surprising.

Typhoon, you’re perpetuating a misunderstanding about something that’s not very difficult to understand. In every scientific field there is a level of consensus. Obviously, if the field is active, there are areas that lie outside the consensus (these are the areas within which scientists are likely to be engaged). It’s useful to recognise the nature of consensus in science (since it’s inefficient for scientists to keep on reconfirming the same evidence)….and in policy (since policy should be informed by those areas of a scientific subject that are well grounded in evidence).

The notion that “consensus” might or might not be “proof” is silly, and I doubt anyone informed on matters scientific would suggest such a thing. Remember that a scientific consensus is an evidence-based entity. In contrast to your assertion it arise because the evidence is rather strong.

I do agree that some of the efforts to portray the deceit that consensus is equivalent to a congregation of equivalent beliefs is unfortunate. Professor Hulme’s comments in this respect (reproduced below [*]) are poor, although one might excuse this as not-very-well-considered throw-away comments on a blog! In no sense does the “consensus paper” “divide the world into categories of “right” and “wrong” (the paper describes the nature of a scientific consensus!) and the Anderegg paper quite explicitly divides publishing climate scientists into those that are convinced or unconvinced by scientific evidence on anthropogenic climate change (and assesses the apparent relative scientific expertise of these according to their publishing history).

[*]Professor Hulme asserts re the consensus paper and Anderegg paper: “It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’.”

Chris – “It’s useful to recognise the nature of consensus in science (since it’s inefficient for scientists to keep on reconfirming the same evidence)….and in policy (since policy should be informed by those areas of a scientific subject that are well grounded in evidence).”

Chris’s comment here is naive, and his rebuttal of Hulme borders on the ignorant.

The point of reflecting on the role of the putative consensus in debates about science and policy is that the putative consensus (as defined by Cook et al) doesn’t reflect the extant consensus (as represented by the IPCC ARs and SRs). Worse still, as I point out, the danger is that the extant consensus, through the propaganda authored by activists such as Cook et al, becomes a ‘consensus without an object’.

An example, which has the benefit of hindsight. Many of us putative 3-per-cent-ers were critical of claims that the Himalayan glaciers were on the brink of disappearing, and that a billion or more people would suffer drought as a consequence. The claim that we were objecting to consisted of some claims from material science, and some from social science. Both claims turned out to be groundless. Yet objections to the material science and to the claimed impacts that were its supposed consequences were resisted on the basis that they contradicted the science.

My own argument was that *even if* the Himalayan glaciers were to melt entirely by 2035, the idea that this left a billion Asians without water depends on a view of people in a fixed, determined relationship with their natural environment that was inescapable. It is as though engineering in Asia was an impossibility. This, I claim, is a political presupposition, which is routinely confused for the ‘scientific consensus’. In other words, an equivalence of society’s sensitivity to climate and climate’s sensitivity to CO2 are *assumed* *before* science.

Chris may not want to take my word for it. But he really ought to read Hulme before he so casually dismisses things he plainly doesn’t understand.

A WHO report estimated the number of deaths that could be attributed to climate change to be 150,000. A later report by the now-defunct Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) claimed that the figure was now 300,000 deaths per year, and would rise to 500,000 by 2030. These deaths all occurred in High Mortality Developing Countries (HMDCs). They were estimated by assuming a factor that was multiplied by climate change and the existing numbers of deaths caused by malaria, malnutrition and diarrhoea.

These figures were claimed, throughout the world, to highlight the importance of tackling climate change. And these figures were unimpeachable — they were produced by the UN, the IPCC, and Kofi Annan’s foundation.

Yet as a demonstration of the magnitude of the problem of climate change, this figure hardly registers against other problems in the world. In fact, many millions die of first-order effects of poverty, nothing to do with climate change. And indeed, as first-order effects of poverty, rather than climate change, the idea that 150K/300K deaths represent an imperative to sign up to global agreements to stop climate change is rather disgusting — the implication being that the remaining millions of deaths don’t oblige some response.

This was, on some sceptical perspectives, a vivid demonstration of Bjorn Lomborg’s argument that more good could be done in the world per $ spent on other things than on mitigation of climate change. Yet this did not fit the priorities of supranational agencies, national governments and NGOs. Moreover, Lomborg was vilified as a ‘denier’, or a ‘delayer’, or in the new ‘SkS’ vernacular, a ‘contrarian’.

A number of critics of the claims in the IPCC that climate change would increase the incidence of malaria were also hounded as ‘deniers’ of the scientific consensus.

That is how the ‘consensus’ works. It is toxic. It distorts priorities, and it engenders a misleading idea about the human world, and its relationship with the natural environment, with damaging consequences.

A footnote to the story is that, over the course of the 2000s, the incidence of malaria fell by 20%. Lomborg and other critics of the IPCC were right. They have been ignored *because* of the putative consensus. And rather than having their arguments even given consideration, they instead faced speculation about the political and financial motivations. IPCC Chair, Pachauri even asked “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s?”

Ben, are you not getting a little caught up in the rhetoric associated with the “angry” aspects of these issues?! I’m not “rebutting” Prof. Hulme. I’m pointing out that one of his throwaway comments on a blog is not a very considered one since is doesn’t really represent properly the nature of a couple of papers that address consensus. In essence his comment tends to portray a consensus as some sort of congregation of beliefs whereas the consensus is based on scientific evidence. It’s for that reason that some understanding of the nature of scientific consensus is very useful – for policy makers, for example, like Ed Davey who seems to have a decent understanding of these issues (good news since he’s the government minister!).

It’s possible that Prof Hulme meant to portray the consensus in this manner…maybe he didn’t. It’s not really that big a deal since it’s a blog comment. Yes?

The Himalayan glacier issue is rather a non issue too isn’t it? Overblown statements are made about all sorts of things scientific, some in error some not. It’s not as if policy was rushed into action as a result of some mistaken comment or announcement! Surely the whole point about scientific consensus is that these largely establish those parts of the science that are well-supported by evidence and therefore are most valuable for policymakers. It seems to me that contrived indignation isn’t a useful means of addressing scientific issues of public importance.

“In essence his comment tends to portray a consensus as some sort of congregation of beliefs whereas the consensus is based on scientific evidence.”

I’m pretty sure I made a distinction between the putative consensus and the extant consensus, and I showed how the putative — rather than extant — consensus operates in the wider debate, and in the consideration of evidence while policy making. Your comment therefore seems obtuse at best.

You seem to want to claim that any appeal to the consensus is, in each and every case, deference to science, whereas there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. As I point out in my post, there is the problem of a ‘consensus without an object’, which you don’t seem able to address. The ‘consensus’ just seems to stand in your arguments as a synonym for ‘science’, whereas the point I made was that the consensus in fact becomes detached from its scientific consensus, such that any criticism of policy or science can be dismissed, no matter what the substance of that criticism. The notion of ‘consensus’ obfuscates any discussion of the content of the consensus. Ed Davey being a perfect example of such hand-waving. Had he been better informed, the interview would not have drawn such ire from environmental political activists such as Dana, and there would not have been so many complaints about the lack of expertise on the show in question.

“The Himalayan glacier issue is rather a non issue too isn’t it? Overblown statements are made about all sorts of things scientific, some in error some not. It’s not as if policy was rushed into action as a result of some mistaken comment or announcement!”

If you don’t think that the urgent plight of a billion Asians were used as moral capital in climate negotiations, and for climate and energy policy, what do you really think was the basis for those policies? The implication seems to be that these are simply a pretext for some scam or conspiracy.

I’m also interested to read that you’re not all that bothered that ‘Overblown statements are made about all sorts of things scientific, some in error some not’. I wonder why you’d have no problem with overblown statements seemingly made with the authority of the scientific consensus, while you have such a huge problem with dissent from the scientific consensus in the other direction. Clearly, then, the consensus isn’t as important as you claim it is.

“It seems to me that contrived indignation isn’t a useful means of addressing scientific issues of public importance.”

I might just add, Ben, that another reason why a proper focus on the scientific evidence (which may or may not be representative of a consensus) is that policymakers can make rather more considered and dispassionate assessments than the sort represented on blogs. Under those circumstances we can be spared those tedious set piece argumentations about the nasty IPCC and what Bjorn Lomborg says, that one finds on blogs!

I just had a very brief look at the IPCC 4th assessment report and on malaria, it states:

“Studies published since the TAR support previous projections that climate change could alter the incidence and geographical range of malaria. The magnitude of the projected effect may be smaller than that reported in the TAR, partly because of advances in categorising risk. There is greater confidence in projected changes in the geographical range of vectors than in changes in disease incidence because of uncertainties about trends in factors other than climate that influence human cases and deaths, including the status of the public-health infrastructure.”

It goes on to list the studies and summaries the scientific studies to that date that bear on the subject.

So there clearly isn’t a consensus (in the IPPC report and I suspect more generally) on the effect of global warming on malaria prevalence. No doubt relevant policymakers know this (I expect they know this from discussions with scientists rather than from reading blogs). However I also expect that policymakers are aware of potential consequences relating to disease prevelence, insect-borne vectors and so on in a warming world and are taking note of the scientific evidence as this accrues…

Chris – “I might just add, Ben, that another reason why a proper focus on the scientific evidence….”

But you necessarily cannot focus on the scientific evidence when your test of the evidence is it’s agreement with the putative consensus.

A perfect example…

“Under those circumstances we can be spared those tedious set piece argumentations about the nasty IPCC and what Bjorn Lomborg says, that one finds on blogs!”

You hate blogs so much, but here you are. And you wave away criticism of the consensus and of the IPCC away so easily. That casual dismissal reflects the intransigence that has become the most defining characteristic of the ‘consensus’ and those who wield it.

“I just had a very brief look at the IPCC 4th assessment report”

Well done. You also discovered that the evidence changed between TAR and AR4.

What you will also notice in the ARs and SRs is that very matters matters of substance in IPCC literature enjoys agreement (i.e. 97%) in the literature on specifics as high as it does in Cook et al, on bogus, incoherent and ambiguous categories.

“However I also expect that policymakers are aware of potential consequences relating to disease prevelence,”

Indeed, and the evidence is mounting up that the risks associated with climate change have been over-stated. In no small way, I think this accounts for Cook et al’s need to reframe the consensus.

“What you will also notice in the ARs and SRs is that very matters matters of substance in IPCC literature enjoys agreement (i.e. 97%) in the literature on specifics as high as it does in Cook et al, on bogus, incoherent and ambiguous categories.”

Should be

“What you will also notice in the ARs and SRs is that very FEW matters matters of substance in IPCC literature enjoy agreement (i.e. 97%) in the literature on specifics as high as it does in Cook et al, on bogus, incoherent and ambiguous categories.”

Ben, are you not making making incorrect assumptions that seem to align with a preconceived personal/political view? e.g. your comment “But you necessarily cannot focus on the scientific evidence when your test of the evidence is it’s agreement with the putative consensus.” I focus on scientific evidence every day in my day job. I rarely think explicitly about “consensus”! In general I consider whether a particular viewpoint or interpretation is supported by the evidence. That’s what one would hope a policymaker would do, although the latter is often in a difficult position since s/he may not be in a position to assess the evidence in its entirety. Under those circumstances perusal of authoritative documentation (IPCC reports) or discussion with experts is appropriate. The science under consideration may or may not be well-enough defined/supported to be considered a position of consensus..

I quite like blogs Ben, though they can be an awful waste of time! In general it’s appropriate to consider scientific evidence, especially in relation to policy, in a more considered manner, and the scientific literature is actually a pretty good place for this (still!) since one has to make a decent physical and intellectual effort to produce something of publishable quality and once it’s formalized in the literature a paper (or series of papers) are fair game for considered critique (if they’re not too good perhaps) and extension (if they provide useful for further research).

It’s a very important point (and an appropriate one to discuss on a University blog board!). After all if as a by-stander we’re to make an assessment of (say) the “consensus paper” that has so exercised everyone, are we supposed to peruse the blogosphere and read every last thing some blogger might have spent two hours writing? I don’t think so. We may, if we’re well enough informed, be able to come to our own opinion on the paper…alternatively we can wait until someone does the hard work to publish a critique (aka Dr. Tol!)…

Chris — I don’t know anything about your job, for .e.g which science you are involved in. I can say, however, that in my work, which involves policy analysis and research, that many politicians’ arguments for policy reveal that, even where they claim to be speaking for the ‘scientific consensus’, it is transparent that they don’t know what they’re talking about. And it is transparent in the literature from, for example, Ed Davey’s own department, the advice they get is often out of kilter with the extant scientific consensus, and moreover, has been produced by a very partial treatment of the facts, often by activists posing as academics.

So, no, I’m not ‘making incorrect assumptions that seem to align with a preconceived personal/political view’. My point is about the ‘consensus without an object’ operating in debates about policy. I must say I sense some projection in your question — and I think that it is the tendency of many with a green bent to see their politics as somehow given by ‘the science’.

If as you say, you ‘focus on scientific evidence every day’, then the reason why you don’t think explicitly about the consensus relating to that science is because you are engaged with substance of the evidence — presumably.

But perhaps you’re missing the point deliberately. Do you not understand that a consensus might *not* relate to its putative object (i.e. the science and evidence)? Or do you think that when anyone says ‘the consensus’ they automatically understand it in all its detail and nuances?

In other words, might you understand the difference between the rhetorical use of ‘the consensus’, and an engagement on the substance of a consensus? Do you understand this point about a ‘consensus without an object’? Have you read my post? It seems to me you don’t and it’s because you haven’t.

I’m glad you have changed your mind about blogs, and I look forward to your change of mind being reflected in a change of tone in your conversation.

Do you have a clue, chris? Can you describe the alleged 97% consensus claimed by the Cook et al authors? Is it that the climate science literature indicates that humans are responsible for most of recent global warming, or is it that humans are causing some global warming? Or is it something else? Did you see above that dana1981 misrepresented the data in his paper in an effort to lead us to believe that the consensus supported by their study is that humans are causing >50% of warming? Do you know what Ari’s p0rno approach is? Have you read Cook et al and the many critiques that it has spawned? Or are you just a kibbitzer offering casual throw away opinions?

Don – “Have you read Cook et al and the many critiques that it has spawned?”

He doesn’t need to. He just needs to observe in the first instance that the criticism is just from a blog, and therefore ‘not science’. And it it’s in a paper, he just needs to observe that it contradicts the consensus, therefore it’s outside the scientific consensus.

It is possible that Chris really believes that ‘the consensus’ and Cook et al’s attempt to re-define it really is equivalent to the science and evidence relating to climate change. He may really think that when we say ‘Cook et al’ is poorly conceived, etc, we’re saying ‘the science of climate change is all wrong’, or that ‘there’s no such thing as climate change’.

Either way, his attempt to make equivalents of denying Cook et al and denying climate change (or the science and evidence relating to climate change’) makes my point for me.

Dana said:”Our survey also included categories for papers that quantified the human contribution to global warming. In the author self-ratings phase of our study, 237 papers fell into these categories. 96 percent of these said that humans are the primary cause of the observed global warming since 1950. The consensus on human-caused global warming is robust.”

It has been repeatedly pointed out to dana that this is a misrepresentation of the data reported in Cook et al. Table 5 clearly states that 39 authors’ self-ratings reject AGW. Dana has stated elsewhere that there were 228 author self ratings that endorsed the notion that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming. Somewhere along the line dana has apparently made up the number of 9 AGW rejections, thus he claims 96%. Now that he has been called out on this, one would think that if he were honest he would correct his error. i conclude that he is not honest.

“(4a) No position – Does not address or mention the cause of global warming;

(4b) Uncertain – Expresses position that human’s role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined;”

They categorized the papers that fell into (4b) as “No AGW position or undecided”. And those papers, which may have been in the thousands, were not counted in their calculation of the consensus. Clearly “uncertain/undecided” is a position on AGW. That is clearly stated in their description of (4b). How many of the 8000+ papers in category 4, were rated as (4b)? We will very likely never know cause they ain’t releasing their data.

“After taking a look at the 9 papers classified as a (7), Richard Telford ”

Hmm. One of my favourite papers in the 97% was this…

—————————
Title: Dealing with spam: more on climate change
Author(s): Alex M. Andrew, (Reading, UK)
Citation: Alex M. Andrew, (2008) “Dealing with spam: more on climate change”, Kybernetes, Vol. 37 Iss: 3/4, pp.550 – 553
Keywords: Internet, Search engines
Article type: General review
DOI: 10.1108/03684920710827625 (Permanent URL)
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Abstract:
Purpose – Aims to focus on aspects of the menace of spam, or unsolicited messages by e-mail, are treated, especially a service designed to stop spam at or near its source. A TV documentary asserting that global warming is not due to human activity is reviewed and shown to be unsound. A search facility that contributes to charity is introduced, as well as sources of health advice in periodic newsletters.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews developments on the internet, especially those of general cybernetic interest.

Findings – Combating spam by the means described can be effective. The view that global warming is due to human activity is not seriously challenged, though there is room for difference of opinion about the imminence of catastrophe.

Practical implications – The menace of spam can be mitigated by the means described. There can be little doubt that global warming is largely due to human activity.

Since I just quoted Mr. Pile, readers should believe I’m responding to his comment.

But after this bait, it’s easy to switch. For instance:

Richard Tol has claimed that five out of the ten abstracts rated by Cook et al, 2013 were incorrectly rated. Let’s run through the list of those abstracts for him.

[…]

He may have a point about (3). He is clearly incorrect about the others. The best that can be said for Tol is that, perhaps, he was mislead by Scafetta’s absurdly false claim that “Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.” False, of course, because the IPCC’s claim is that “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

Super really big hmmmm. 🙂 But IMHO, I think you miss the elegantly designed point being made by Ben Pile that showing someone on a blog going through a separate study of the 3% to further show how cruddy and worthless the 3% is, really isn’t a very impressive thing in itself when you can show that the source material he works with still comes from a study that includes this spam paper.

Although if it makes you feel better I’ll join in on the admonition: Folks please avoid getting played by Ben Pile! 😉

Quite elegant, isn’t it? I hope it appeals to your asthetic sensibility. If it does not, I’m sure I could find some other gems.

***

I thought contrarians might have been pleased to know that a blogger reopened the debate regarding PAPERS that reject AGW on the basis of some quantitative analysis. Too bad. Perhaps the call of the comedy of menace is too strong.

Quite elegant, isn’t it? I hope it appeals to your asthetic sensibility. If it does not, I’m sure I could find some other gems.

Mmm from that link of Ben Pile’s words all that stands out regarding aesthetics is a grammatical error. As you may notice from what you quoted of my words you are appealing to wrong person to be disgusted by mere grammatical errors! 😉

Although you are impressing me more that you are somehow innately confused about the difference between the categories of grammar and logic.

And no, grammar in itself isn’t a sure fire way to guarantee logic, in fact the practice of skill in grammar to distort meaning has a name I believe – sophistry 😉

@TLITB1 @BarryJWoods @cult_cognition @dana1981 @skepticscience @shubclimate Spencer had a chance to rate his own papers. He did have a say.

Since Spencer declined to participate – as his right – it is clear that the papers survey of a subset of his whole work, and merely by reading one abstract, cannot categorically declare Spencer own declared position a lie.

Another thing that disturbs me about this exercise is the apparent perceived power of this paper held by its fans, and the tacit encouragement of this interpretation by Nuccitelli, that the instrument can be turned around and use lazer like to “take out” people like this.

I’m sorry you feel disturbed by your strawmen, tlitb1. They should not have eaten red herrings.

Unless we have evidence from Spencer’s work that he endorses the claim that A is a fundamental cause of GW, we should conclude that he misled Congress under oath. He misrepresented both his work and Cook & al. Spencer’s inner life does not erase the evidence where he does minimize AGW.

> There is no meaning in putting 11 944 in the denominator anywhere in regard to the 97% and 3% split!

It does for Richard Telford’s review being a “separate study” of the 3%, one that Mr. Pile might elegantly deconstruct by reading back an anecdote already told by Mark Bofill. One does not simply review a figure by taking it for granted.

Also note that Richard Telford studies the quality of the PAPERS, something that has not done Cook & al. A detail that should put Mr. Pile’s anecdote (or is it Mark Bofill’s?) into perspective.

***

> 8000 of the 11944 is junk DNA

At least 746 authors might disagree with that claim.

***

Richard Telford so far promised to review 25 papers. Since there are 78 ABSTRACTS and 39 self-rated PAPERS that reject AGW, notwithstanding the 40 that rides on the uncertainty monster, Richard Telford is far from having done any kind of “separate study” of any quantity that can be referred as “the 3%”.

Contrarians should be glad that somewhere on the Internets, somebody does open up the debate.

Mr. Pile, taking principled and precautionary measures, finally deleted my comments and those related to them (more than 15), including the warning with the [sic.], even after I complied to his request.

> There is no meaning in putting 11 944 in the denominator anywhere in regard to the 97% and 3% split!

It does for Richard Telford’s review being a “separate study” of the 3%, one that Mr. Pile might elegantly deconstruct by reading back an anecdote already told by Mark Bofill. One does not simply review a figure by taking it for granted.

Also note that Richard Telford studies the quality of the PAPERS, something that has not done Cook & al. A detail that should put Mr. Pile’s anecdote (or Mark Bofill’s?) into perspective.

***

> 8000 of the 11944 is junk DNA

At least 746 authors might disagree with that claim.

***

Richard Telford so far promised to review 25 papers. Since there are 78 ABSTRACTS and 39 self-rated PAPERS that reject AGW, notwithstanding the 40 that rides on the uncertainty monster, Richard Telford is far from having done any kind of “separate study” of any quantity that can be referred as “the 3%”.

Contrarians should be glad that somewhere on the Internets, somebody does open up the debate.

Mr. Pile, taking principled and precautionary measures, finally deleted my comments and those related to them (more than 15), including the warning with the [sic.], even after I complied to his request.

The comments from the anonymous Willard were deleted from my blog because he was warned to stop trolling — i.e. posting ad homs, insults, and general invective to distract from the discussion. He didn’t stop. Thus his comments were deleted.

Unless we have evidence from Spencer’s work that he endorses the claim that A is a fundamental cause of GW, we should conclude that he misled Congress under oath.

Yes but that is the key point that you, Tom Curtis, and I think many other fans of this paper evidently miss. I.e. that nowhere is it shown by the Cook paper that all the papers in their 97% portion unequivocally are shown to endorse:

A is a fundamental cause of GW

Nowhere. The Cook et al paper really doesn’t show this.

If you are in doubt then please ask Mr Nuccitelli here (who I assume may be still monitoring), or any other author elsewhere, to explicitly endorse that interpretation of their paper to help you out. They can’t. If they do then that would be interesting.

Hi everybody, I think this comment stream has now run out of steam and is attracting quite a bit of hot air, so to speak. So I suggest that unless commenters have a substantially NEW point to make that might shed new light on novel issues, they might want to curb their enthusiasm 😉

My point in mentioning the “study” by Richard Telford is to provide a way out of rating ABSTRACTS or self-rating PAPERS.

Good ol’ critical REVIEW.

It is more important to know that the PAPERS (no, not the ABSTRACTS) that have been categorized in (7) lack credibility. Providing a critical review of the PAPERS can’t test the validity of Cook & al’s paper, which means that tlitb1’s jibe is irrelevant. Mike Hulme’s point is also circumvented by such an endeavour as Richard Telford: he can’t disagree about opening up the debate on any paper, can’t he?

***

Critical review is the main way for debates to happen, besides directly in the lichurchur. This is basically what Climate Audit and CA do, incidentally. If we paid due diligence to ALL THE PAPERS [1], we might realize that what the auditors uncover is quite underwhelming.

This would be the way to open up the debate: all it would take is for participants to act in a constructive manner, something even Richard Telford fails to do. (Yes, I’ll tell him so.) I already did elsewhere, including at Mr. Pile’s who, besides deleting my comments and breaking his promise, had the brilliant idea to reveal information about my IP.

Raising concerns is trivial. We can’t even account for the billions invested in Occupy Irak as we speak. That we’re here discussing a paper most of the commenters find unimportant should make you wonder why we are witnessing this sad comedy of menace while waiting for Godot.

***

Please note, Brigitte, that any topic you accepted so far in the comment thread become eo ipso fair ball. If a commenter maintains that Spencer’s personal beliefs are worth considering is accepted as a valid topic, to point out that Spencer misled Congress under oath stays within that topic. I can give you a rundown of the topics introduced so far by our contrarian crew if you wish.

Wilard – “It is more important to know that the PAPERS (no, not the ABSTRACTS) that have been categorized in (7) lack credibility”

It makes no difference to people who don’t think Cook et al has any credibility — for reasons stated, even if we agree the papers in 7 are as bad as claimed.

It’s not clear from your comment HOW this new paper makes TLITB’s or Hulme’s arguments redundant. The criticisms of Cook et al stand, no matter what anyone finds in #7.

“That we’re here discussing a paper most of the commenters find unimportant…”

You mean Cook et al? It’s a very important paper. It has been cited by the president of the USA, and Ed Davey — in both cases, in ignorance. Hence my post here, about the ‘battle of received wisdoms’. Many people — across the debate — think that the attempt to redefine the consensus besets progress in the debate. Nobody’s saying it’s unimportant. After all, it either defines the consensus, or it accidentally epitomises the worst problems of the debate.

“… should make you wonder why we are witnessing this sad comedy of menace while waiting for Godot.”

All the possible interpretations of WfG make it hard to understand your point.

OK, this is simply invective. Since Brigitte sees fit to publish it, I will respond.

I warned you about trolling behaviour. You continued trolling. Therefore I deleted your comments as promised. Subsequently, I mentioned that you are from Canada — I didn’t reveal your IP address. That narrows you down to one of a possible 34.5 million people. That’s hardly a revelation. If you really wanted us to take your arguments seriously, you wouldn’t hide behind an online avatar. This debate is apparently important — the world is at stake. But you won’t put your real name to your claims.

Mr. Pile asked me to go away and I did as soon as I saw the comment, which I took time to publish on my site. So the most plausible explanation is that Mr. Pile showed remorse regarding his own speech patterns, which I listed in one of the last comments.

***

Readers interested in Mr. Pile’s understanding of the Precautionary Principle may consult:

[T]he expected cost of climate change is greater as a result of uncertainty about its magnitude (eg, the canonical example of climate sensitivity), and thus those who argue that uncertainty is a justification for inaction are precisely backwards in their thinking.

It’s a pretty simple point, which has been talked about by Michael Tobis for a long time. And it’s not at all controversial, scientifically speaking. So I didn’t think it needing commenting on.

But recently Ben Pile wrote a really bizarre attempt at criticism, so it might be worth revisiting the topic.

Mr. Pile’s behaviour here, in the sad incident with me on his blog, on his Twitter feed, and recently with Wott (whom he called a “prick”), shows how well he appreciates open debates and stiffled dissidence.

Your posts remaining on my site were conditional on you not trolling any more. Why should I publish your comments — which were obtuse, rude, and derailing — on my site? You’re one of about three people I’ve ever deleted. If I thought you were taking the discussion seriously, I wouldn’t have deleted them. But invasions by environmentalism’s PR Police force because they’re angry that Judith Curry like something I wrote isn’t something I’m willing to indulge. Sorry.

> It makes no difference to people who don’t think Cook et al has any credibility […]

It would be interesting that Mr. Pile may have access to these people’s mind states, whoever they are. Nevertheless, it is irrelevant to the point I’m making, and therefore makes no difference to no one, whatever one may think of Cook & al, or not. This is conceded with Mr. Pile’s “no matter what anyone finds in #7”.

To repeat, by paying due diligence to these papers, Richard Telford reminds of an ancient way to deal with PAPERS which bypasses this futile hurly burly.

***

> It’s not clear from your comment HOW this new paper makes TLITB’s or Hulme’s arguments redundant.

Let’s no conflate the arguments here. If by “tlitb1’s argument”, we mean

> that nowhere is it shown by the Cook paper that all the papers in their 97% portion unequivocally are shown to endorse “A is a fundamental cause of GW”

then all we saw is a proof of assertion of Mr. Pile’s argument himself, which should remind auditors of check kiting. The argument to which this empty claim, checkited by Mr. Pile in his last comment, has been refuted time and time again. Readers should start here:

This argument has nothing to do with Mike Hulme’s argument, which is that Cook & al is irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change. This is an argument insofar as this position can be traced back at least 2009 in his writings. Non nova, sed nove.

Mike Hulme claimed that Cook & al was “poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed”, without argument. Incidentally, this opinion contrasts with the one of Dan Kahan’s:

The Cook et al. study, which in my view is an elegantly designed and executed empirical assessment, doesn’t meaningfully enlarge knowledge of the state of scientific opinion on climate change.

On the other hand, Mike Hulme and Dan Kahan do seem to agree that Cook & al should have little impact. Dan Kahan even claims that it provides a distraction which could exploit contrarians in starting a food fight. Paraphrasing, of course.

Of course it is, for why else would we read his piercing po-mo op-eds, which we should take in all seriousness because we know his name?

***

It is a pity that Mr. Pile can’t come with any constructive criticism. How does he propose we should proceed? Does he have any formal specification in mind that would be quasi-contrarian-proof? What should be the protocols and the procedures by which we’d open debates?

Is there anything substantive behind this climate resistance except raising concerns? Not that we mind raising concerns. Concerns are very important.

Willard – “It would be interesting that Mr. Pile may have access to these people’s mind states, whoever they are”

It quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are. If you don’t believe that the Cook paper isolates meaningful categories, then no amount of investigation into any of the categories could serve as a rebuttal to the criticism of the Cook paper.

We then have this tortured language:

“then all we saw is a proof of assertion of Mr. Pile’s argument himself, which should remind auditors of check kiting. The argument to which this empty claim, checkited by Mr. Pile in his last comment, has been refuted time and time again.”

Check kiting, is as far away a form of financial fraud. I’m sure Willard isn’t accusing me of that, so I’m not sure what he is trying to remind readers of. Then we have this routine, ‘this has been refuted…’ line, which is hollow, and points second hand to a further empty claim (Verheggen) — nothing more than vapid assertions — that the Cook paper is a valid measurement of the consensus.

Says Willard: “This argument has nothing to do with Mike Hulme’s argument, which is that Cook & al is irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change.”

Hulme’s claim was that ‘The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue […]. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’.’ Pressed further, Hulme added:

“… the Cook et al. study is hopelessly confused as well as being largely irrelevant to the complex questions that are raised by the idea of (human-caused) climate change. As to being confused, in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements. The irrelevance is because none of the most contentious policy responses to climate change are resolved *even if* we accept that 97.1% of climate scientists believe that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” (which of course is not what the study has shown). And more broadly, the sprawling scientific knowledge about climate and its changes cannot helpfully be reduced to a single consensus statement, however carefully worded.”

So Hulme offers us a demonstration of the paper’s confusion. His argument was not, per Willard’s claim, limited to saying that the paper was ‘irrelevant to the most contentious policy responses to climate change’ — though he says that too.

Hulme’s argument about the authors’ confusion about what the magnitude of agreements represents is an argument that the Cook paper’s categories are ambiguous, and chosen for their impact in the climate debate. The interchangeability of the terms used in the paper, as demonstrated by Hulme, is a revealing insight into the authors’ own confusion. It’s quite possible that they really think that the terms are synonymous. The demonstration of their bad faith, however, is revealed by their anger at being challenged, and their inability to reflect on those criticisms.

Same in Willard:

“Of course it is, for why else would we read his piercing po-mo op-eds, which we should take in all seriousness because we know his name?”

Willard is welcome to take or leave anything I write. And I rather suspect he would ignore it completely had it not been for Judith Curry’s name. After all, the only attention I have received from Willard is following my articles having been favourably referred to by Curry. The explosion of obtuse verbiage from him, on perhaps a dozen or more websites, is not an attempt to criticise *my* argument, but is instead an attempt to police the lukewarm end of the climate blogosphere. Environmental activists are obsessed by strategy.

“It is a pity that Mr. Pile can’t come with any constructive criticism. How does he propose we should proceed?”

Well we could start by expecting more of the Energy and Climate Change minister than him waving bits of paper with ‘97%’ scrawled on them (in crayon) at his interrogators. We could admit that the debate about the climate consists of more than simply two opposing sides, divided on one simple proposition. We could admit that the attempt to divide the debate on that basis is a strategy, rather than an attempt to form a better understanding of climate science. And we could admit that the tendency to produce catastrophic climate change stories is a political phenomenon, rather than the result of scientific investigation. And we could admit that a great deal of politics gets smuggled in under ‘science’. I say ‘we’…

> If you don’t believe that the Cook paper isolates meaningful categories […]

First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing. Kahan claims that the paper has merits, but will not achieve what it seeks to do; Hulme claims that the paper has little merit and argues that it will not be is “largely irrelevant”.

Both claims should be distinguished. In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms. In fact, even Dan Kahan realized that providing constructive criticisms might be more coherent with his overall position.

***

Second, the sentence underlined acts like a preterition. Preteritions are quite useful. For instance, readers might not be interested in any of those questions:

So who is paying Mr Pile for his contracted work? Mr Bloom out of his own personal pocket? What has happened in the two weeks since Mr Pile emailed me? Has his contract work been terminated? Or is there some other explanation? Why was Mr Bloom planning to attend this local public hearing in Devon, when that is not within his MEP constituency of Yorkshire and the Humber?

Therefore, we won’t raise them. But people who know Barry Woods may expect he will phone UKIP to settle that matter. Only Barry knows the impact of his phone call to express his concerns.

We sure thank Barry for his concerns.

Just like he is using Cook & al as a proxy for his climate résistance, Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.

***

Check-kiting has currency in the auditing sciences. It denotes a situation S when A endorses B who endorses A in return. Such S has been seen in the Deming Dossier:

> The Montford Dossier certainly deserves due diligence. For instance, it is claimed that “Lindzen of MIT has confirmed that the email was written by Jonathan Overpeck.” But note 12, which follows this claim, points to an Arxiv document authored by Lindzen. There is one mention to Overpeck in that document: a signature to an international conference invitation. The only mention of “getting rid” of MWP cites (Deming, 2005) as authority. Here is when the Auditor might revive yet another introduction to check-kiting.

Readers can witness how in his monography our beloved Bishop almost turned purple when retelling that story.

***

Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him. Not that this matters much, as it quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are.

> If you don’t believe that the Cook paper isolates meaningful categories […]

First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing. Kahan claims that the paper has merits, but will not achieve what it seeks to do; Hulme claims that the paper has little merit and argues that it will not be is “largely irrelevant”.

Both claims should be distinguished. In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms. In fact, even Dan Kahan realized that providing constructive criticisms might be more coherent with his overall position.

***

Second, the sentence underlined acts like a preterition. Preteritions are quite useful. For instance, readers might not be interested in any of those questions:

So who is paying Mr Pile for his contracted work? Mr Bloom out of his own personal pocket? What has happened in the two weeks since Mr Pile emailed me? Has his contract work been terminated? Or is there some other explanation? Why was Mr Bloom planning to attend this local public hearing in Devon, when that is not within his MEP constituency of Yorkshire and the Humber?

Therefore, we won’t raise them. But people who know Barry Woods may expect he will phone UKIP to settle that matter. Only Barry knows the impact of his phone call to express his concerns.

We sure thank Barry for his concerns.

Just like he is using Cook & al as a proxy for his climate résistance, Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.

***

Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him. Not that this matters much, as it quite simply does not matter what people’s mind states are.

Willard — “First, it ignores the main point I made in my earlier comment, which is that claim about the quality of a paper is independent from the claim that a paper is irrelevant for the grand scheme of thing.”

Nobody has argued otherwise.

Yet it is as though critics of Cook et al were arguing that there is only one, universal problem with the paper. In fact, a number of critics, from across the spread of opinion, were arguing in each case that there a a number of problems with Cook et al.

“In fact, it makes little sense to spend that much energy on a paper that can’t achieve what it seeks to do. If there is indeed something to be gained by such endeavour as Cook & al (be it to become a single-serving site), only then would it make sense to invest time and energy to provide constructive criticisms.”

This might be true. But the Cook paper is not just a paper. It was also a PR exercise that caught the attention of Obama and Davey. It became part of the broader conversation. Thus it reveals something about the broader conversation. It was, as has been revealed, a strategic response to a need to re-iterate the consensus.

And in turn, that it has faced criticism from all corners of the climate debate has produced a great deal of anger from the authors and their colleagues, revealing yet more about the character of the political environmentalism that has dominated the debate about the climate, but which is now fighting a rearguard action — not against the sceptics, but against its own erstwhile savants.

The self deception is like performance art…

“Therefore, we won’t raise them.”

But, oh! In the act of not raising the questions, Willard raises the questions… Could he possibly be so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn’t know he doesn’t raise them precisely in order to raise them? Don’t be fooled — Willard knows he’s making a cheap shot. But it’s a salvo delivered, nonetheless in complete ignorance. It’s the same spirit in which the article linked to was written in… A scoop, in which the investigative reporter reports his investigation precisely to such a degree that the reader doesn’t realise the reporter investigated nothing, and found nothing. It’s not unlike watching someone put their actual head up their actual backside…. impressive, until we realise that the only purpose this contortion serves — apart from the spectacle itself, of course — is to report what the acrobat ate for breakfast.

“Mr. Pile’s using my comments as a springboard for his armwaving. This behaviour conflicts with his self-avowed objective to open up debate.”

Well, I thank the anonymous Canadian, with an avatar of a character from a cartoon, for the opportunity that he or she has given me. But the point is obvious. Any proposition that divides two perspectives (or a range of perspectives into two) will turn each of the perspectives into an opportunity to ‘wave their arms’. ‘It takes two to Tango’, as they say. Though in Willard’s case — and with the Cook et al army in general — his arm-waving looks more like drowning in shallow water. A lot of splashing, and very little progress towards the shore.

“Mr. Pile can continue to claim that Cook & al’s categories do not make sense to him. We are quite convinced that they don’t make sense to him.”

Willard is wrong. The categories make perfect sense to me, and I understand them completely.

My argument was that Cook et al, and Tom C, and Willard… Don’t understand the categories.

The ambiguity and internal incoherence of the paper and its categories are not an obstacle to understanding them: they are an attempt to frame the climate debate. They are its authors own prejudices. They represent what the authors *want* the debate to be about. But not even climate scientists agree.

Check-kiting has currency in the auditing sciences. It denotes a situation S when A endorses B who endorses A in return. Such S has been seen in the Deming Dossier:

> The Montford Dossier certainly deserves due diligence. For instance, it is claimed that “Lindzen of MIT has confirmed that the email was written by Jonathan Overpeck.” But note 12, which follows this claim, points to an Arxiv document authored by Lindzen. There is one mention to Overpeck in that document: a signature to an international conference invitation. The only mention of “getting rid” of MWP cites (Deming, 2005) as authority. Here is when the Auditor might revive yet another introduction to check-kiting.

> [A] number of critics, from across the spread of opinion, were arguing in each case that there a a number of problems with Cook et al.

We thank Mr. Pile for his general concerns, and particularly for introducing an indefinite number of critics in the debate. Let’s introduce some more. Everyone should be welcome to debate.

A number of Revolutionary Communist Party members should see that Dan Kahan’s position and Mike Hulme’s position disagree about the quality of Cook & al.

A number of Frank Furedi worshippers should see that Mike Hulme’s argument against the quality of Cook & al rests on a comparing two sentences in the text that are imperfect paraphrases of one another.

A number of Foucaldians would point out that if we’d apply this criteria, we’d have to reject (Hulme, 2009) as utterly confused, as it purports to make a “genealogy” of climate change, whence Pr. Hulme is mostly doing an archeology.

A number of Living Marxism subscribers should recognize that the title of Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.

A number of Serbia genocide deniers should realize that Dana does invoke empirical arguments to support the motivation of his paper and that these arguments can’t be dismissed by appealing to something that Dana did not do.

A number of Sense About Science‘s talking heads should see that Kahan’s argument rests on a false dilemma: nothing prevents the use of his suggestions in parallel to using the 97% project as (e.g.) a single-serving site.

A number of Spike! editorialists could accept Dan Kahan’s point about communicating in a way to reach the contrarian audience, which he portrays as “fearless white hierarchical individualist males”, is orthogonal and not opposite to Dana’s efforts.

***

An indefinite number of Trotskysts among the Genetic Interest Group, the Progress Educational Trust, the Science Media Centre, and Pro-Choice Forum should be thankful to George Monbiot, whose article connected all the actants of our sentences:

Readers interested in communication strategies should consult the RCP/LM Watch website. There’s an interesting story involving University of Derby Education expert Professor Dennis Hayes, Dr Vanessa Pupavac from the University of Nottingham and a third organiser Ciaran Guilfoyle, involved in the IoI’s Culture Wars and Battle of Ideas.

***

We wish to thank Mr. Pile and Barry Woods for making this kind of comment possible.

“Dan Kahan’s position and Mike Hulme’s position disagree about the quality of Cook & al.”

It is of no consequence.

” Mike Hulme’s argument against the quality of Cook & al rests on a comparing two sentences in the text that are imperfect paraphrases of one another.”

The statement from Hulme not provided by Willard is:

“As to being confused, in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements.”

Willard says the two sentences are imperfectly synonymous. Hulme says they are ‘two entirely different judgements’. Willard hasn’t offered any meaningful argument that demonstrates any functional equivalence between the two statements that might counter Hulme.

As I and others have pointed out, there are many other problems with dissimilar terms used interchangeably and inconsistency between objects in the Cook paper. Willard has not offered any argument that counters these criticisms.

“if we’d apply this criteria, we’d have to reject (Hulme, 2009) as utterly confused, as it purports to make a “genealogy” of climate change, whence Pr. Hulme is mostly doing an archeology.”

Which criteria? Willard needs also to explain why the genealogy/archaeology problem is fatal for Hulme. It sounds specious, to say the least.

“…the title of Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.”

The problem for Dana, however, is that he isn’t well informed, as has been established by criticism of the Cook paper, which challenges both the paper itself, and Dana’s understanding of it. The Cook paper obfuscates the scientific claims, by reducing them to a meaningless maxim — or even truism — “climate change is happening”.

“Dana does invoke empirical arguments to support the motivation of his paper and that these arguments can’t be dismissed by appealing to something that Dana did not do.”

We are left wondering how an ’empirical argument’ supports a ‘motivation of his paper’, what those ’empirical arguments’ are, and which arguments were dismissed ‘by appealing to something that Dana did not to’, but which he was apparently accused of. Again, a hollow criticism, that reflects Willard’s inability to express his ideas, much less discuss them.

“Kahan’s argument rests on a false dilemma: nothing prevents the use of his suggestions in parallel to using the 97% project as (e.g.) a single-serving site.”

It is of no consequence. However, Kahan’s argument is:

“there’s good reason to believe that the self-righteous and contemptuous tone with which the “scientific consensus” point is typically advanced (“assault on reason,” “the debate is over” etc.) deepens polarization. That’s because “scientific consensus,” when used as a rhetorical bludgeon, predictably excites reciprocally contemptuous and recriminatory responses by those who are being beaten about the head and neck with it.”

If that leaves room for a parallel project, we can make a paraphrase of Willard’s claim, thus:

“Just because it’s a really stupid idea, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it”.

“Dan Kahan’s point about communicating in a way to reach the contrarian audience, which he portrays as “fearless white hierarchical individualist males”, is orthogonal and not opposite to Dana’s efforts.”

Dana’s efforts are intended to polarise the debate, as was demonstrated above and elsewhere, to present a misleading view of the debate as divided on a meaningless proposition, equivalent to “climate change is happening”, whereas disagreements in the climate debate are typically divided on matters of degree and consequence. Thus Cook’s paper is intended as a strategy, rather than to shed light on the substance of debate, and has the consequence, paradoxical to his aims of informing the public, of obfuscating matters of the debate’s substance. Hence my post on this site, which define some of the problems of a ‘battle of received wisdoms’ that follow asserting a ‘consensus without an object’.

What remains of Willards infantile and ad-hominem trolling is that I stand accused of being a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, I worship Frank Furedi, I am a Foucaldian, I subscribe to Living Marxism, I deny Serbian genocide, I have something to do with or am related in some way to Sense About Science, and I am a Spiked editorialist.

However, I am not now and never have been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which as far as I am aware, folded in the mid-1990s, nearly 20 years ago.

I am not now, and never have been a subscriber to Living Marxism magazine, or its later version “LM”, which also folded about fifteen years ago. The two or three copies I did buy — and I was very young when I did buy them — were bought because I was outraged that anybody could deny the reality of climate change, which is what several LM authors had been accused of doing.

I have never been involved in the Sense About Science project, except to go to one event in Oxford in 2007, which featured speakers drawn largely from the Hadley Centre and Met Office, and was advertised thus:

“On Saturday 17th March 2007, leading weather and climate scientists launched our guide to weather and climate predictions for the public at St John’s College, Oxford. The presenters gave a fascinated audience a whirlwind ride through the complex world of numerical models, including recent techniques for combining predictions and making probabilistic forecasts, and helped them to make sense of the IPCC assessments of the impact of CO2 on the climate.” – http://www.senseaboutscience.org/news.php/26/weather-and-climate#sthash.ADPpJh7c.dpuf

I met Prof. Myles Allen there — is he a denier? If there were any climate deniers there at all, much less sceptics, they would have been most disappointed by the presentations.

As far as I am able to tell, the arguments that have earned LM magazine to have been charged with ‘Serbian genocide denial’ consist of no more than pointing out that the moralisation of the war by the Western press led to the internationalisation and escalation and brutality of the conflict, which was already muddy and consisted of no such simple categories as goodies and baddies, oppressors and victims, and that the tendency to moralise provided western governments with a pretext for self-serving interventions. Far from ‘denying’ atrocities, then, LM magazine upset the sensibilities of the seemingly liberal ‘humanitarian interventionists’, who it held culpable for deepening them.

Foucault? Really? I’m not sure where this is from. Perhaps Willard is just trying to extend the ‘deniers are anti-science’ claim. However, Willard will note, per Sokal and Bricmont, that the postmodernists were not as much accused of being ‘anti-science’ as they were accused of misappropriating scientific terminology. Willard might want to take a fresh look at Cook et al after reading Trangressing the Boundaries…

“We could make more of an issue about the connections between Monbiot, Lucas, Goldsmith, and Spinprofiles’ connections to and sympathies with the British establishment, ie, hypocrisy. But our point here is more to try to explain why Spinprofiles perspective is unwittingly spinning. Lucas, Monbiot, Spinwatch, the UK’s new, green political establishment, are a network, the associations of which consist in each member’s disorientation.

[…]

“The Spinners see a problem in the mere fact of association – it implies something underhand and malign – but fail to see themselves as associated. It is as if, in order to compensate for their failures, they now seek the real estate above the petty affairs of mere humans: people who find themselves associated by virtue of shared perspectives or interests must obviously have only been brought together on a dangerous myth, because there can be no objective basis for their coming together. Only the spinners are brought together by truth.

“This inability to identify or reflect on their own perspective is nothing new. It’s the same symptom of any of the alienated 9-11 truther, or NWO conspiracy theorists. The world exists as a huge mass of connections, and the connections can be read off to imply that Queen Elizabeth II is related to George W Bush, and so both are implicated in something or other, thereby proving that both belong to some extra-terrestrial race of lizard-Jews. But what is being expressed in such views is not as much a perspective on the world, as these individuals’ inability to understand it.”

REF – “Dana’s post is An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy.”

It seems there are those that are interested in accurate science and those that are interested in messaging science for policy and persuading the public. Is it to be called a concern troll, to request accuracy in science. Whilst comment is robust at Guardian, it seems at Skeptical Science being off message is not allowed.

IE my comments (and even readers disagreeing with me!) on the topic were deleted, despite least one reader agreeing I had a point:

Is a request for accuracy, quoting Professor Richard Betts from a BBC article so bad, so off message to SkS’s followers that it must be deleted… reproduced below, screenshot prior to Skeptical Science moderation here:http://unsettledclimate.org/?attachment_id=648

My SkS Comment (missing, )

———————–

So I was not ‘nit picking’ with respect to dangerous ref comment 1?

I can understand that John might have been a bit overwhelmed with the media attention (ie the interview I quoted) that the Obama acount tweeted, and in the moment missed the ‘dangerous’ misrepresentation in the tweet linking the word to his paper, which it clearly does (despite protests to the contrary earlier), if we look at the tweet, as the url embedded links to Reuters and quotes from Dana and John about the paper.

Of course those interviews are out there now, very hard to correct misinformation when its out there (ref Lewadowsky and Cook’s paper on this subject) But like with Richard Betts tweet, perhaps good judgement, even now to make the effort, maybe a tweet, to say, the ‘dangerous’ is not a finding of our paper, please follow link for what the paper does say, – and of course in that url you could link to other work that does support dangerous

Pedantic or accuracy? I’ll side with absolute accuracy when dealing with any media (like Prof Richard Betts)

Richard explained the problems with the media in a BBC article, when he describes the journalist is it global warming ring around.

Richard Betts:
“The question is: do climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on “our side” against the climate sceptics?

It’s easy to blame the media and I don’t intend to make generalisations here, but I have quite literally had journalists phone me up during an unusually warm spell of weather and ask “is this a result of global warming?”

When I say “no, not really, it is just weather”, they’ve thanked me very much and then phoned somebody else, and kept trying until they got someone to say yes it was”. – Richard Bettshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8451756.stm

Thus, by his insistence on accuracy and correcting the media, which he has done on a number of occasions, Richard has built trust in the sceptic community. My earlier comment (15) offered a way forward, starting with what we can agree on

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